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In October 2010, Khan Academy began a volunteer driven effort to translate its video library into the world’s widely spoken languages. This involved both text translations (captions) and voice translations (dubbing/re-doing videos). In early 2011 Ben Kamens and Dean Brettle (one of KA’s passionate volunteers) integrated the Universal Subtitles widget to enable crowdsourced subtitling of videos on Khan Academy. Today we have 14,000+ subtitles in 50+ languages.

The journey of the translations completed so far:

For voice translations, we needed to find individuals who could not only be Khan Academy’s voice in another language, but also have the commitment to translate an entire topic’s playlist. The latter was key to ensuring consistency in voice within a topic. Khan Academy relies on an amazing group of “Advocates” for each of the languages it is supporting, to ensure the effectiveness and quality of the translations. Currently we have 7,500+ voice translations in over 23 languages.